a little attention.

That is because this business of backbone farming is the backbone of
Business In General. As long as money is circulating freely Business
In General, being merely an exchange in values, wears a clean shirt and
the latest cravat. But let some foreign substance clog the trade
channels and at once everything tightens up and squeezes everybody.

Day by day the great mass of the toilers in the cities go to work
without attempting to understand the fluctuations of supply and demand.
They are but cogs on the rim, dependent for their little revolutions
upon the power which drives the machinery. That power being Money
Value, any wastage must be replaced by the creation of new wealth. So
men turn to the soil for salvation--to the greatest manufacturing
concern in the world, Nature Unlimited. This is the plant of which the
Farmer is General Manager.

On state occasions, therefore, it has been the custom in the past to
call him "the backbone of his country"--its "bone and sinew." Without
him, as it were, the Commercial Fabric could not sit up in its High
Chair and eat its bread and milk. Such fine speeches have been
applauded loudly in the cities, too frequently without due
thought--without it occurring to anyone, apparently, that perhaps the
Farmer might prefer to be looked upon rather as an ordinary
hard-working human being, entitled as such to "a square deal."

But all these years times have been changing. Gradually Agriculture
has been assuming its proper place in the scheme of things. It is
recognized now that successful farming is a business--a profession, if
you like--requiring lifelong study, foresight, common sense, close
application; that it carries with it all the satisfaction of honest
work well done, all the dignity of practical learning, all the comforts
of modern invention, all the wider benefits of clean living and right
thinking in God's sunny places.

And with his increasing self-respect the New Farmer is learning to
command his rights, not merely to ask and accept what crumbs may fall.
He is learning that these are the days of Organization, of Co-Operation
among units for the benefit of the Whole; that by pooling his resources
he is able to reach the Common Objective with the least waste of effort.

He has become a power in the land.

These pages record a story of the Western Canadian farmer's upward
struggle with market conditions--a story of the organized Grain
Growers.